Böcker i Supplements to the Journal of-serien

Based on several years of research on Jewish intellectual life in the Renaissance, this book tries to distinguish the coordinates of a oemodernitya as premises of Jewish philosophy, and vice versa. In the first part, it is concerned with the foundations of Jewish philosophy, its nature as philosophical science and as wisdom. The second part is devoted to certain elements and challenges of the humanist and Renaissance period as reflected in Judaism: historical consciousness and the sciences, utopian tradition, the legal status of the Jews in Christian political tradition and in Jewish political thought, aesthetic concepts of the body and conversion.

In The Existential Philosophy of Etty Hillesum Meins G.S. Coetsier offers an account of Etty Hillesum's spiritual and cultural life in light of the writings of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Abraham Abulafia (1240 c. 1291) founded an enormously influential branch of Jewish mysticism, referred to as the prophetic or ecstatic kabbalah. This book, from several perspectives, explores the impact of Christianity upon Abulafia. His copious writings evince an intense fascination with Christian themes, yet Abulafia s frequent diatribes against Jesus and Christianity reveal him to be deeply conflicted in his relationship to his southern European religious neighbors. This book undertakes a careful study of Abulafia s writings, suggesting that the recognition of an inner dynamic of attraction and revulsion toward the forbidden other provides a crucial key to understanding Abulafia s mystical hermeneutic and his meditative practice. It also demonstrates that Abulafia's uneasy relationship to Christianity shaped the very core of his mystical doctrine.